


By Coincidence or By Design

by BlackEyedGirl



Category: West Wing
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon, Gen, M/M, Pre-Canon, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-09
Updated: 2011-04-09
Packaged: 2017-10-17 19:18:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/180308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackEyedGirl/pseuds/BlackEyedGirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Josh convinces Sam to come and work on the Hoynes campaign. Toby is curious about their opponent's speechwriter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	By Coincidence or By Design

**Author's Note:**

  * For [raedbard](https://archiveofourown.org/users/raedbard/gifts).



> For raedbard, whose birthday it must still be somewhere. Title is from Drag, which was a prompt from far more than a year ago...

“Who the hell is that?”

CJ looks at him across the campaign office. She raises one eyebrow like she thinks maybe he’s finally cracked. “That’s John Hoynes, Toby. The noble opposition. He’s the one we’re supposed to be thinking of ways to crush. Right now, in fact. You back with us?”

Toby points at the television. “Close your eyes and listen.”

“Toby, what?”

“Close your eyes. Now tell me who the hell wrote that speech because I’ll tell you right now, it wasn’t Hoynes or any of his guys.”

CJ closes her eyes, finally. She frowns. “Yeah, okay.”

This is an understatement of phenomenal proportions. Not only is there no one on Hoynes’s team who can write like that, but Toby is unconvinced that there’s another person on the Bartlet team who could do it. And they’re wasting him on a cookie-cutter speech about new technologies.

“Tell me, _tell me_ that if Josh Lyman went on a damn headhunt to freshen up the Hoynes campaign team - tell me one of our guys would notice.”

“They would.”

“Then again, I ask, and I will ask until someone _answers me_ : who the hell is that?”

 

* * * *

 

_Two days earlier_

Josh stood outside Sam’s office, dripping wet and he’s never been a good liar. Sam doesn’t know if he apologises as he leaves the meeting.

“What is it?” he says, “what’s wrong?”

Josh’s face is pale. “My dad. He’s- it doesn’t look good. They don’t know. And I don’t-.”

He’s thin in Sam’s hold, shivering and soaked with New York rain. Sam holds tighter.

“Let’s…” Sam says. “C’mon, let’s get out of here.”

The coffee shop is quiet and Josh huddles over his cup. His knuckles are white, curled around it and he doesn’t look at Sam. “I need a win.”

Sam looks at the lines he can see formed on Josh’s forehead. “Okay?”

“I need- if anything happens… Sam, I can make a man President.”

“Josh. Your dad knows-.”

“Come back with me.”

“Josh.” They’ve had this argument again and again for the past seven years, increasing in frequency the last few months.

“Sam. You and me? We could win this. Then you can do whatever you want. It’s not like you’re exactly…”

“Josh!”

Josh looks momentarily contrite. “Sorry. But this isn’t what we- we had better plans than this, you and me.”

“And Hoynes is it? Really?” Sam has heard Hoynes speak. That he is better than the Republican alternative is probably all Sam would concede. Hoynes doesn’t say anything new. He doesn’t inspire. Sam gets enough of that already.

Josh grips the cup more tightly still. He meets Sam’s eyes. “I need a win.”

Sam finds himself saying, “Okay, Josh. Okay.”

 

* * * *

 

_Three weeks later_

“How does he do that?” Toby will admit to being a little impressed.

Leo breaks off from whatever he had been saying about consistency of message. “What now?”

“He’s managing to make Hoynes sound like he _won’t_ sell out the environmental lobby to big oil the first chance he gets.”

“He,” CJ says, “ _or she_ is good, yes.”

The governor starts paying attention to what they’re saying. It’s alarming, seeing as how he normally only tunes in long enough to forget someone’s name and admonish them for something. He says, “What’s this now?”

“Toby’s mystery man,” CJ says. Her grin is wicked. “Hoynes has a new writer. Toby’s jealous.”

Toby glares at her. “Remind me why I brought you here?”

“I think you missed my sparkling repartee.”

Leo sighs. “Remind me why I hired any of you?”

The governor ignores him. He walks to the radio and fiddles with the dials until the volume increases. Hoynes is still talking about national parks and the importance of green space. Governor Bartlet smiles. “Leo, why didn’t you get me this guy?”

 

* * * *

 

They don’t let him do anything fun. Sam is broadly aware that this makes him sound like a twelve year old but he doesn’t care. They don’t let him do anything fun.

It’s not that writing isn’t fun, because it is, and Sam is glad to do it. It’s just that he wishes he had some kind of control over the content.

“We can’t promise them _anything_?”

Senator Hoynes looks at him. “Sam.”

“I’m not saying we give them the house, I’m just suggesting that we do more than smile and say they’re doing a great job.”

“Sam.”

“They are doing a great job, so it would be nice if we could do what we’re all agreed we _should_ do, and promise them the two percent increase.”

“Sam.” Hoynes looks across at Josh before looking back at Sam. “No one’s arguing that we’re not seriously considering the increase. We don’t need to say it in public.”

“Why not?”

Josh interrupts this time. “Sam.”

“Seriously, why not? If we mean it, then we should say it. The only votes we’d lose over it, we don’t have anyway.”

“It paints a picture. And that does lose us votes. It loses us the centre, it loses us fiscal conservative/social liberals who maybe we could have brought onside.”

“Josh.” Sam gestures across the table: help me out here.

Josh opens his mouth to say something, shaking his head.

Hoynes gets in first. “We’ll revisit the issue after New Hampshire. But good work on the veteran speech. Just… try and clear up the language a little next time. I don’t need to sound like a damn poetry book.”

 

* * * *

 

One of Hoynes’s campaign lackeys is caught in front of one of the cameras. He’s asked what he thinks of the Bartlet surge.

Blue-eyes (who the report generously informs him is called Sam Seaborn) blinks for a moment, like a startled grad student. And then he says, “The media have mis-categorised our response to the Bartlet campaign as a hostile one. On the contrary, I think both Senators Hoynes and Wiley appreciate the effects of the Bartlet campaign in raising the level of debate. We’re talking about issues which otherwise might have been left until the election campaign, and it’s highlighting the differences between Senator Hoynes and his opponent. Our campaign is very grateful for that.”

Toby stares.

CJ asks, “Did he just-?”

“Yeah.”

“Toby, did he just- I mean, did he just paint us as a third-party candidate?”

“Yes.”

“He made us out to be, I don’t know, the hippy guy from the Socialist Worker’s Party, the one who gets ten votes and a clap on the back, in New Hampshire of all places?”

“Yes, he did,” Toby says. “He’s good. I’m better, but he’s still… Get someone to find out if that’s him.”

“Toby.”

“Just check.”

It doesn’t prove anything. It was a nice move from someone cornered but it doesn’t mean that it was him. Not with the almost-tan and the tailored suit and the smile. The person on the screen shouldn’t have been able to write all those words of before. Toby had almost begun to admire the voice of the writer behind them, however reluctantly. The pictures pose an entirely new problem.

 

* * * *

 

Sam is sitting in his office listening to Bartlet’s stump speech on repeat. It helps him think.

Josh comes to stand in the doorway. “It’s Wiley we need to beat, not Bartlet. Though nice work on that answer.”

“Yeah,” Sam says. “That was a lie.”

“Well, of course it was a-.”

“To raise the level of debate someone would have to actually engage with what he’s saying.”

“Sam.”

“Yeah, I know. After the election.”

Josh stays in the doorway. “Yeah. Yeah. Hey, come out for a drink with me.”

“What?”

“It’s been a long… yeah. Come and get a drink.”

 

* * * *

 

Toby asks about the nearest bar and is pointed out of the offices in the right general direction.

But this is campaign central and there are only so many bars and Toby’s been thinking about this for weeks now. So it makes sense.

Toby knows Josh Lyman to duck around if he sees him at a DNC meeting, but there are just the two of them there at the table. Josh Lyman and Sam Seaborn, bent close together in one of the booths.

He wouldn’t have said anything. He would have left them alone (Leo had said “I tried to get Josh Lyman on board but his father just went into...”). Except Lyman looks up. “Hey.”

Seaborn startles and turns around. “What?”

Lyman smiles. “Sam, this is Toby Ziegler. Bartlet’s director of communications.”

Seaborn stands up to shake Toby’s hand. “Sam Seaborn.”

“Yes,” Toby says. “I saw you on television today.”

Seaborn looks at the table. “Yeah, hey, that was-.”

“No,” Toby says, “don’t apologise, that was good. As deflection tactics go, pretending that the other side of the debate is an interesting diversion works pretty well. They teach you that in…” He looks at Seaborn consideringly. “Harvard? Yale?”

“Princeton and Duke, but not bad. And I wasn’t going to apologise. It was nice to meet you, Toby.” Seaborn slides past him out of the booth; he smells of soap and sharp aftershave, no hints of the beer and smoke of the bar. Lyman follows Seaborn out, but turns to smirk at Toby on the way.

When CJ hears the story, she laughs for five solid minutes.

 

* * * *

 

They’re in the green room waiting for the Senator to finish chatting after a TV interview, and the Bartlet camp are moving in ready for theirs. Maybe the producers think the democratic candidates are too polite to fight with each other. That might be true about the candidates, but Mandy Hampton looks very much like she wants to beat Josh to death with a clipboard.

Sam sits back and watches it for a little while. It does Josh good to get his yelling out on someone that he doesn’t need to work with again in the next ten minutes. And Josh’s dad is doing worse, so Josh is anxious, and so Sam’s not going to deny him the pleasure of a good argument.

Sam looks across to the other side of the room. Toby Ziegler is standing in the corner of it. The man’s expression is somewhere between amused and bored. Sam smiles; at that moment Ziegler’s head turns and he catches the end of it. Ziegler looks down quickly, and then back at Sam. Sam nods. He sees no reason they can’t be civil.

Only then Ziegler is walking towards him and Sam finds himself taking an instinctive step back. Toby Ziegler’s attention focussed on just Sam is fairly alarming to behold.

“Mr Seaborn,” Ziegler says.

“Yes?”

Ziegler smirks at that, not as though Sam has said something amusing, but as though he may have done something. “Don’t look so scared.”

“I’m not. I’m just wondering whether you’re here to disparage my education again, or maybe you’ve found a new target.”

“I wasn’t ‘disparaging’ your education the first time. I’m sure you had everything your parents could afford to give you. And so did I, so does everyone else. That’s the point.”

Sam bites his lip. “Look, I really don’t want to- there are better fights we could be having.” He spreads his arms wide. “I used to defend oil companies for a living, don’t you think I’ve at least moved up in the world?”

Ziegler’s smile is real this time, though surprised. “You’re a lawyer.”

“I’m a writer,” he corrects, before he has time to think about it.

Except: “You are,” Ziegler agrees. “I won’t fight you on that one.”

They stare at each other for a moment or two. Then Bartlet is called in to get ready for his piece, and Ziegler goes with them. Sam watches him go through the door.

Josh walks up to Sam and shakes his head. “No,” Josh says. “Sam, come on.”

“What?”

“Can you please- just once, Sam, an appropriate guy. Not a republican, or a flag-burning socialist, or the opposition candidate. And please, not Toby fucking Ziegler. He’ll tear you to pieces.”

“Josh.”

“His _wife_ would tear you to pieces. Have you ever _met_ Congresswoman Wyatt? I mean, I think they’re separated at the minute but seriously, man, run away. Don’t even think about it.”

“I’m not,” Sam protests. “I’ve got other things to worry about anyway.”

“Yeah?” Josh asks.

“Yeah. He dodged on Social Security again.”

“Sam.”

“What are we even doing here?”

 

* * * *

Toby finds out that Seaborn was briefly engaged before joining the Hoynes campaign, that he did indeed defend oil companies in New York, and that he interned under Josh Lyman in the vacations from law school.

What he says, when he sees Seaborn in a bar with Lyman again, is, “if you let him mention that bogus study on industry restrictions again, I’m going to bury you under free trade statistics. I thought you might like to know.”

 

* * * *

 

Ziegler walks past him at a debate and says, “Big business, oil interests, doesn’t believe in gun control. Still trying to get a moderate Republican nominated for the Democratic Candidacy?”

Sam says, “Still trying to convince the party that nominating left-liberal New England governors has been working well for them so far?”

That doesn’t move the expression of dark satisfaction on Ziegler’s face.

 

* * * *

 

Seaborn says, caught off guard, “Of course I read it. I’ve read all your speeches.”

Toby doesn’t know what his face must look like; Seaborn flushes pink.

They walk briskly away from each other.

Toby has his expression composed until the Governor says, “So, that was your young man, was it? I suppose a little fraternization with the enemy can’t hurt at this point.”

“There really isn’t any fraternisation, sir. Mostly just verbal abuse.”

Governor Bartlet smiles. “Well, sometimes that’s the best part.”

 

* * * *

 

Ziegler says, “Your pacing was off in the third section.”

“I’m sorry?”

“The rest was fine. Good.” He sounds like it’s being dragged out of him.

This is payback, Sam realises, for his inadvertent compliment last week. He really has read everything he can find of Ziegler’s writing. It’s supposed to be about knowing his enemy and mostly that’s true, but it’s also simple admiration. Ziegler should be writing Inaugural Addresses and States of the Union. He should have a win to his name and Sam knows that’s not true. The universe isn’t fair sometimes and Sam wishes he could say that to the man, but apparently Ziegler doesn’t take compliments well. Sam pitches his tone appropriately wry and says, “I’ll take that under advisement, thank you.”

Ziegler looks away.

 

* * * *

 

Seaborn says, “You never wanted to win?” as though it’s genuinely puzzling him.

“ _Want_ doesn’t really come into it.”

“Yes it does. I mean, look at,” _me_ , he doesn’t say, “I don’t know, consultants for hire. Everyone has some kind of criteria for who they work for. Likelihood of winning doesn’t seem to be one of yours.”

“Or maybe candidates likely to win don’t offer me jobs,” Toby suggests.

Seaborn shakes his head. “That’s not it.”

“No,” Toby concedes. “It’s not.”

“So?”

“I’m a bad liar. Even to the candidate. And I don’t like,” _Hoynes_ , he doesn’t say, “ _flash_. I like substance. Substance doesn’t usually win. But I pick it every time. Also I’m fairly used to losing, by this point.”

Seaborn laughs. “A cynic and an idealist all at once. I like it.” His smile is warm, and utterly inappropriate between members of opposition teams. It looks like a secret between the two of them, and Toby feels hot underneath it.

 

* * * *

 

Seaborn is drinking alone this time. So is Toby. Toby sits at the bar and is aware of Seaborn drinking a beer alone in the booth near the back, and he waits. Smoke curls in air in front of him.

There is a very slight cough from behind him. Seaborn says, “I’m not sure of the etiquette in asking to bum a cigar.”

“You don’t smoke.”

“Not usually.”

Toby to turns to look at him. Seaborn’s tan face is paler than it should be, and there’s a pinch at his mouth. Toby takes the last cigar from inside his jacket and lights it. “You can owe me.”

“Okay.” Seaborn takes it from him and draws on it; he’s not a smoker but he doesn’t choke.

“Where’s Lyman?” Toby asks.

That, apparently, is the root of the problem. Seaborn takes hold of his glass and says, “Connecticut. His father…” He cuts himself off, as though this finally is the point where he has given away too much.

“I had heard he was sick.”

“He’s very… yes.”

“And now Josh has gone back home.”

“Yes.”

“Okay.”

They don’t talk after that.

 

* * * *

 

Sam goes to the funeral, and stands beside Josh, beside his friend, and after that there’s no time to stop and think. They take Colorado, South Carolina and South Dakota. Bartlet takes New Hampshire, predictably, but then Vermont and Maine. And then Wiley drops out and it’s a two horse race and suddenly this isn’t about Senator Hoynes and a New Hampshire governor who hasn’t a hope. They could lose the nomination, and Josh isn’t built for that.

The strangest thing happens. Bartlet goes on TV and says-

 

* * * *

“I need to tell you something.”

“Governor?” Toby sits on the edge of the chair and presses his hands together.

“It’s strange, how these things become important. I just wanted to run a good race.”

“And we’re doing that.”

“And now I’m going to disappoint you, I’m afraid. Because I need to tell you this, before we can go any further.”

Toby has been working for politicians all of his adult life and he’s heard pretty much every story there is. When Governor Bartlet says, “I have MS,” he still chokes on it.

“I’m sorry?”

“Seven years ago, I was diagnosed with a course of relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis.”

What Toby thinks, mostly, is that while he had been resigned to losing, he hadn’t wanted to lose it like this.

 

* * * *

 

Bartlet goes on television and tells everyone that he’s sick. Sam has seen the man in real life only a handful of times but he knows that this isn’t a secret he had needed to reveal. Not unless something had happened, but when Bartlet is asked why he’s telling them now, he says, “Because it was pointed out to me that I might actually win. And it wouldn’t have been a lie but it would have felt like one.”

Bartlet is Catholic, Sam remembers. There’s such a thing as a sin of omission.

Sam is in the Hoynes campaign offices and he can see the effect this is having on the people around him. They’ve just been given a way to win easy.

Sam looks across the room for Josh but can’t find him.

 

* * * *

 

Hoynes gives an interview where he is not the first to bring up the MS, but of course he doesn’t have to be. He can wait for the presenter to ask him - it’s never going to be a non-issue. He can pretend compassion when he talks about ‘this terrible disease’ and how the Governor and Mrs Bartlet must have agonised over keeping their awful secret.

CJ, talking too fast, and flinging pages of notes behind her, says, “Well we know Seaborn didn’t write that answer.”

“No,” Toby agrees, not that they have time to think about it. He supposes that it’s interesting. It was one of the most delicate answers Hoynes would have to give, so you would have thought their best writer would have taken it. Instead there’s only Hoynes, pushing his way through an uneven answer, though it will still work well enough for his purpose.

Toby’s head is full of responses, no space for anything else, but he still notes it as an oddity.

 

* * * *

 

“We shouldn’t be doing this,” Sam says.

“What is it now?” Hoynes asks, stopping his readthrough.

“That’s not a line you would have used a week ago.”

One of the policy aides says, “A week ago our closest opponent hadn’t just outed himself as terminally ill.”

“It’s not terminal.”

“Sam.”

“MS isn’t a terminal illness, and we shouldn’t use the line. It’s going to invite that question again and-.”

“And _what_ , Sam?” Hoynes asks.

“And this is an address on education and it would be great if we could, I don’t know, talk about schools. Or funding, or even social mobility and the damn school vouchers again. Anything but whether or not our opponent might collapse in the Oval Office.”

“You don’t think that’s relevant?”

“No. I really don’t.”

He walks out of the meeting, and goes to find Josh. They need to have this conversation today. They’ve been putting it off for long enough.

 

* * * *

 

Toby sees Seaborn at the door and anger curls sharp in his chest. Then Seaborn smiles and crosses the office floor. “Hi. I’m looking for your Volunteer Director.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Well,” Seaborn meets Toby’s eyes and there is no pity there, only something which looks very much like trust. “I heard these were the headquarters of Bartlet for America, and I’d like to enlist.”

“You’re not kidding.”

“No.”

“Is there something wrong with you? Or did I oversell the attractive proposition of a losing campaign, maybe?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

“You were right.” Sam shrugs as though it is no loss to him to admit Toby’s superiority in this regard. He says, “And I want to help. So what can I do?”

Toby doesn’t need more than that. “Ginger! This is Sam, he’s my deputy, he needs a copy of the campus address notes.” He turns back to Sam. “I need a new draft by three.”

Sam nods, once, and disappears across the room to find coffee. He brings back two cups, and then settles himself into a corner of Toby’s office, with a pen in his mouth. And there he stays.

 

* * * *

 

Sam is pretty good with names, and campaign time runs faster than anything else, but he’s still the new guy, and he’s trying his best.

CJ is the tall one with the best laugh Sam has ever heard, and an ease in front of the camera that he hasn’t learned yet. Mandy is fierce and dark and wants to crush Josh with a fervour that Sam finds a little frightening. Ginger is quiet and utterly dedicated; Bonnie snarks right back at Sam within ten minutes of their meeting; Cathy knows far too much and so Sam doesn’t protest when she steals half his food.

He knows Leo because everyone knows Leo, and Margaret because she is the keeper of Leo’s terrifying schedule. Mrs Landingham asks him, very seriously, if he is here to bring them down from the inside, and when he assures her that he isn’t, she tells him that it wouldn’t have worked anyway. Then she offers him a pistachio cookie and tells him to go right in.

Governor Bartlet does not appear to know anyone’s name. Or, rather (and this is important, given recent revelations), he chooses not to remember them.

So Sam isn’t especially offended when the Governor looks at him with not even terribly polite confusion. “Which one are you?”

“Sam Seaborn, sir.”

“You’re the new one. Josh Lyman’s deputy.”

Sam says, “No, sir, I’m actually Toby’s deputy. And I wasn’t ever Josh’s.”

Toby smirks at him, barely. He says, “Sam decided to jump ship, Governor, yes. Although God knows why.”

There is a silence as though perhaps Sam is expected to answer that one. Sam says, “Maybe I wanted to even things out a little.”

The Governor looks at him. “Boy, you must think yourself some kind of counterweight then.”

“No, sir,” Sam answers. “But I do know where Hoynes’s bodies are buried.”

Bartlet’s reply is fast, sharp. “We don’t-.”

“No sir, of course you don’t. You’re running a better campaign than that. But Hoynes knows how much I know. And I don’t think he’ll be so cavalier with the language he uses to… not knowing what I know. So maybe we can get back to the issues instead of… whatever Senator Hoynes was trying last week.” He notes the heavy tension in the room and says, “And if I’m wrong, you can of course have my resignation.”

CJ laughs. “You’re not half so sweet as you look, are you, Sam?” She sounds impressed.

“I don’t really know how to answer that,” Sam says.

“Don’t,” the Governor says. “What’s next?”

 

* * * *

 

Toby will not deny that he’s curious. At least, he’s curious what Sam would say, if Toby asked. Which bodies, Sam? And why do you know where he buried them?

Sam is typing up his latest draft, trying to incorporate their combined notes on healthcare. Clearly that section became a little more complicated recently. Sam is lying on the floor of Toby’s office, because someone has stolen the second chair. Toby can see the notes, with both of their sets of handwriting scrawled across the pages.

Toby says, “Hoynes cheats on his wife.”

Sam raises an eyebrow. “What do you want me to say to that?”

“And clearly you have proof of that, or you wouldn’t be making your veiled threats.”

“I didn’t threaten anyone.”

“No. You just mentioned that you could.”

Sam puts the laptop aside and sits up, rocking back onto his heels. “Do you want me to?”

“What?”

“Threaten him.”

Toby doesn’t, of course he doesn’t, because if they do that, then Hoynes will too, but the important thing is that what Sam means is _I would do that, for you, if you asked_.

Toby rubs his face. “No, Sam, I don’t want you to do that.”

Sam lies back down. “Okay.”

“But I appreciate the offer.”

Sam nods and says, “Okay,” again. He taps his pen on the page and tackles the section one more time.

 

* * * *

 

It doesn’t matter which side he’s on, the litany has gone back to: _Illinois, New York, California_. This thing is going to be decided soon, one way or the other.

Bartlet has half the campaign staff Hoynes does. Sam hasn’t asked Leo but he knows they must be close to running out of money, unless they get some real momentum going soon.

CJ is rhyming off statistics about MS anywhere the Governor won’t be able to hear her, trying to learn them by heart – the press ask so many questions and she doesn’t want to misspeak.

And yet Sam is happy, he thinks, or something not quite happiness that means belonging, here in the shadowy edges of Toby Ziegler’s office. This is the part that matters.

He calls Josh and says, “How are you?”

“Sam, you can’t just call me up and ask-.”

“Why not? You’re my best friend and your dad just… so I’m calling to ask how you are.”

“Not great,” Josh says. “The guy they got to replace you can barely _spell_ oratory, let alone produce it.”

“I’m sorry about that.”

“You shouldn’t be, it’ll work in your favour the next time they go on TV together.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Sam.”

“You should… we’re doing some good stuff over here.”

Josh’s laugh is strained. “Plus, if I jumped ship too, you’d get to plant some great stories about Hoynes’s campaign team falling apart. Might get some money out of that.”

“Josh. You know I didn’t mean it that way. You should come and talk to him, the Governor and Leo. We could really use you over here. This is… this is the kind of campaign that guys like you…”

“Yeah? And what about guys like you? How’s Ziegler?”

“We’re writing. That’s the part that… we’re writing really well together.”

Josh is silent on the other end of the phone for a long time. “I’m glad. I’m glad you’re happy, Sam.” He hangs up before Sam can say goodbye.

Sam puts the phone down and starts to write. When Toby comes in, he takes the first page away. His hand settles, steady, between Sam’s shoulder blades. He leans in so they can read the words together. He says, “You were talking to Josh?”

“Yeah.”

“Getting through?”

“I don’t know. He’s still… his father died. He wants a win. I’m trying to tell him we could give him one here.” Sam smiles. “Sorry. You want me to go outside and turn around and spit?”

Toby laughs more when he knows Sam can’t see his face. Toby says, “Illinois. New York. California.”

These are the steps. No calling the elections before the votes are in. Sam says, “I know.”

Toby’s hand shifts an inch. “If… we’re running our campaign. If we lose, I’ve done that before. I’ll show you how it goes. And if we don’t…”

A Presidential race. A Democratic candidate who just threw out all the skeletons in his closet, and a campaign for the Presidency of the United States. A campaign that Sam was never meant to be this side of.

“Then we don’t,” Sam finishes. “Illinois. New York. California. We’ve got a lot of race to run yet.”

Toby moves away, going to get the other chair, which has been returned to the office. They crowd together, on the side of the one small desk. The lines are drawn and this is what they’ve chosen. More words, and three more primaries. Anything could happen after that.


End file.
